Mark Bennett: With a soul full of music, Terre Haute's Marc Rogers looks back in new memoir
Oct. 1—One by one Saturday night, musical friends from Marc Rogers' past and present joined him and his family band onstage.
Those musicians and more of Rogers' relatives and friends came to the banquet hall inside Rick's Smokehouse & Grill on Wabash Avenue to celebrate the release of Rogers' new autobiography, "Life With My Guitar: A Musician's Memoir." The show's format fit the book. Its 161 pages recall the days when Rogers served as lead guitarist in Nashville studios and classic venues like the Grand Ole Opry in support of country music icons like "Little" Jimmy Dickens, Kitty Wells, Porter Wagoner, Jim Ed Brown, Skeeter Davis and others.
His memoir also reflects on Rogers' formative musical years in his hometown of Terre Haute, spent learning and honing his skills alongside local singers and instrumentalists, most notably, his late father, Sonny Rogers.
Many of those hometown musicians stepped back onstage Saturday night with the Marc Rogers Band — Rogers and his sons, guitarist Marcus Rogers and drummer John Rogers, and Marc's daughter-in-law bassist, Emilee Rogers. They tore through a list of country and rock hits for three hours.
"I was enjoying it," he said Wednesday. "Even though I was part of it, I felt like I was on the outside looking in, as all these great musicians came up and played and sang."
Essentially, that's the setting of his memoir, though it should be noted that Rogers himself stands out as a guitarist, singer and songwriter. Some of its 33 chapters unfolded in Terre Haute. Others detail his years on the Nashville circuit, 1976 to 1994. The latter includes him introducing a then-teenage guitarist and fellow Terre Haute native J.T. Corenflos to Music City insiders in 1982. Corenflos later became one of Nashville's most sought-after session musicians, right up until his death in October 2020. Rogers also recounts his own recording session experiences, including an audition for a gospel album produced by Porter Wagoner. When Rogers, just 19 years old, finished his first song, Wagoner teasingly shook his head no, before laughing and telling the kid he'd gotten the job.
"It was a collection of stories over a lot of years, and it's great to see it all there in one book," Rogers said, noting that his son, John, assisted with its compilation. "The majority were things that were special to me, and those that the readers would find intriguing and interesting."
"Life With My Guitar" features humor and irony, too.
One episode involves Rogers going "fishing" with "Little" Jimmy Dickens. On a tour, the band's chronically faltering bus broke down again. While awaiting repairs, Jimmy led his young guitarist — with their fishing rods in hand — up a roadside hill. With no water in sight, Jimmy had Marc join him in pretending to reel in big catches from a drainage ditch, causing befuddled motorists to pull over and watch.
More than two decades later and back in Terre Haute, Rogers decided to fulfill a longtime desire to learn classical guitar. He enrolled in a class at Indiana State University under then-first-year instructor Brent McPike, now a friend of Marc's and fellow Wabash Valley Musicians Hall of Famer. At age 43, Rogers — who'd played in football stadiums — found himself a bundle of nerves and excitement at his ISU class's student recital.
A poignant chapter retraces the summer night in 1984, when Rogers, his dad, a drummer and bassist filled in for the regular band at a Terre Haute nightclub. The evening turned horrific when a gunman shot and killed Marc's father, off-duty Terre Haute police officer Sonny Rogers. Years later, as the chapter explains, Marc developed a friendship with Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor from Terre Haute who famously forgave the Nazis who tortured her at a concentration camp in Auschwitz. Kor, who died in 2019, inspired Rogers to forgive his father's murderer.
"That was the hardest chapter," Rogers said Wednesday. As heartbreaking as those passages are, they still don't veer from the "glass half-full" approach Rogers took in writing the book.
"That story even came out with a triumphant ending," he said. "It led to an incredible friendship with Eva." Its message of forgiveness may not be for everyone, Rogers acknowledges.
"I realize that for many people, in their situations, they could never forgive," he said, "but it did work for me, just as it did for Eva. That was a difficult chapter to write, but it was a chapter that had to be written. You know, I was playing guitar that night, and it's part of my life."
Now 63, Rogers hopes the book's readers feel encouraged to heal and move on. He believes his dad "would be really proud" that Marc and his wife, Barbie, moved on from that tragedy, and raised their family in Terre Haute, just as his dad did. Last Saturday night, the fruit of that perseverance showed in a joyful, three-hour salute to the musical life Rogers' lays out in his new memoir. Sons Marcus and John jammed masterfully with Marc, as the professional musicians they are, while daughter-in-laws Emilee and Kaylee played bass and snapped photos, respectively. Barbie, also Marc's longtime songwriting collaborator, watched from the crowd with more family and friends.
They closed with the rollicking title track from Rogers' 1994 album, "This Country Boy Rocks." Its lyric "music is in my soul" was obvious to the audience, and will be to readers of "Life With My Guitar."
Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or [email protected].
Finding 'Life With My Guitar'
—Copies of Terre Haute musician Marc Rogers' new autobiography, "Life With My Guitar," are available through the Marc Rogers Band Facebook page facebook.com/marcrogersband/ or at Rick's Smokehouse & Grill, 3102 Wabash Ave., Terre Haute.